A new 'multicultural' city

Click here for an interesting article discussing the problem of silence regarding the history of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki back in 1996, one year before the city became Cultural Capital of Europe.

Despite the many difficulties the Jewish community survived the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek nation-state and continued to be a important part of the city although it never again was the leading force it were in the Ottoman era. It will be devastated however, by Word War II and the Holocaust. After that, for the majority of the city's population, its history, not even spatially evident, will be lost to oblivion for many decades. A rediscovery of the community's history and a breaking of silence regarding the Holocaust will begin in the 1990s and many papers continue to be published since. Aggelopoulos notes that the rediscovery will emerge by intellectuals and activists discussing the wider problem of immigrant rights and also by the fact that in 1997 the city will become Cultural Capital of Europe.

In a city where different ethnic and religious communities are again becoming a reality the gaze of many is turned in the past, back to the multicultural past of the Ottoman Empire, when different religious communities lived 'peacefully' in the city. A new identity of citizenship is being constructed in the city, one that stresses the importance of 'multiculturalism' in a time when immigration seems such a big threat for the European Union. Thessaloniki seems to want to open more to the world and events such as the Film Festival could contribute to the promotion of it as a 'world' city in the imagination of people, although a concentrated effort for such a process doesn't seem to have began yet (and with the economic crisis it seems even more difficult), as in Istanbul for example. New ideas are most of the times based on 'pre-histories', they try to search in the past and find a similar pattern in order to justify their existence and claims for the present. However, when looking in the Ottoman past for a 'harmonious' way of co-existing, we must not forget that the circumstances back then were very different from today's reality of citizenship in the modern nation-states of a world characterized by globalisation, neoliberal capitalism and the revolution of communication technologies, a secular western world (in our corner of the planet anyway) where religion is seen more as a part of a person's 'culture'. In the Ottoman Empire however, as in other empires before, religion was an institutionalized way for people to be organized and ruled by monarchs. What the millet system of the empire imposed was that the different religious communities of Thessaloniki where living in same space but they were not really intermingling with each other and their social and 'cultural' life was in a big extend separate. Moreover, competition between them was evident and also conflicts from time to time.

When thinking about the matter and researching, apart from Aggelopoulos' paper, I also found a very interesting paper by Henriette-Rika Benveniste, entitled "The Coming Out of Jewish History in Greece", where she discusses the wider meta-narratives that have developed different discourses concerning the history of the Jews in Greece. In the end she proposes a new way under which the history of Jews in Greece can be seen and she concludes:

It would not be unreasonable to argue that we are currently going through a second phase in Jewish history in Greece. The first phase coincided broadly with the 90’s, when we witnessed a new interest in the study of Greek Jewry, an interest due to many factors, as I tried to show. People coming from a variety of backgrounds, contributed with their work and their questions to the charting of Jewish presence in the past. In the end I would say that a field of study has gained at least some legitimacy, it has nourished a more self-consciously critical stance for history making and it has also positively complexified modern Greek historical consciousness. If the 90’s were the years of “coming out”, I would say that the current second phase is “post-celebratory” and more demanding of reflection.

“Οι πολλαπλοί χρόνοι της πολυπολιτισμικότητας στη Θεσσαλονίκη”, Γιώργος Αγγελόπουλος

”The Coming Out of Jewish History in Greece”, Henriette-Rika Benveniste

Troubles of integration

The new Greeks in the city received a lot of special privileges. They were allowed, for example, to sell their goods on the doorsteps of the Jew's stores. Since they were exempted from taxes and fees [and since] they didn't pay rent or have other expenses, they gave tough competition to the Jewish merchants. Even though the Jews didn't protest, even donating money for their relief, Venizelos complained that "the Jews did not welcome the refugees with open arms".

After the exchange of population with Turkey the composition of population in Thessaloniki changed dramatically. In 1926 80% of the population was Greek Orthodox and 15-20% Jewish. This event was the final blow for the Jewish community's influence in the economy of the city. The relationship between the Asia Minor Greeks and Jews was tense and the former seemed to have been more hostile towards the Jews than the older inhabitants of the city. Thessaloniki was a unique case for the Greek state because there the Jews were a majority. That is why special legislations were introduced by Venizelos in order to minimize the community's influence. On the other hand he also took measures to reduce any anti-Semitism that would be directed against the Jews, other measures to relieve the community from certain burdens and he reassured the Jews that they would be treated as equals. Of course, such moves had a purpose, and that was that Venizelos wanted to avoid any interference of "protector countries" - if he had a conflict free Thessaloniki, he also had a Greek Thessaloniki. Thus, the environment around the community was steadily becoming Hellenized and in a few years Thessaloniki will successfully be transformed to a modern Greek, Orthodox Christian city. The Jews accepted their new Greek citizenship but in the Lausanne treaty they were not mentioned as a minority - the treaty was mostly dealing with issues of Greek and Turkish minorities and trying to solve the problems between the two countries.

Measures that were against the Jews of the city however, must not be read solely as anti-Semitic (although in some cases they seem to have been) but as part of the bigger process of the nationalistic agenda of the modern Greek state that also had to deal with the wider problem of the region of Macedonia and a deeply complicated and difficult transition from an empire to a nation-state, from an Ottoman legislation to modern European model of administration.

quote from Fleming's book, "Greece: a Jewish history" by Yitzhak Immanuel

"Salonika and its surroundings"

Click on the above image and you will be redirected to the website of the British Pathe where if you click play you will watch an old video from Thessaloniki. The website has tones of very old videos which are very exciting. Searching with the term "Salonika" you can find many videos from the city with the oldest dating from Word War I. This particular has issue date 1915-1917. It has no sound and you can see various aspects of the city - the seaside, kamara (the surviving Roman arch of emperor Galerius) when the road was still going under it, people still wearing the fez, soldiers marching, shots from a richer area, the Rotunda, many working class and everyday people and a shot of the walls and the area outside of them. Probably many people in the video are Jewish since the community comprised the biggest part of the city's population. We can still trace the Ottoman past in people's clothing and the traditional small houses but we can also see aspects of modernization like cars, trams and modern houses.

The fire of 1917

Fires were always a big problem for Ottoman Salonika. The city suffered from them all through the centuries due to the densely populated areas of wooden houses, the flammable materials of everyday life, the incompetence of the Ottoman administration to deal with the fires successfully and the strong north winds that could very fast turn a small fire to a large and destructive force. A big one was that of 1890. The fires where really a devastating disaster for those living in the lower part of the city, the center, and the Jews of the city were among them.

Probably the most destructive fire was that of 1917, five years after the Greek army set foot in it. It destroyed a huge part of the town and created sixty thousand refugees.

An aerial photo

Map showing the area destroyed by the fire

Destruction of the fire

The fire devastated the Jewish community of the city burning numerous Jewish homes, organisations and businesses. Due to the restoration of the center and a new legislation concerning the rebuilding and the ownership of the land that will greatly harm the Jewish community and diminish its influence in the city, a new Thessaloniki will rise from the ashes, more Greek and more European. By a tragic accident the fire will thus contribute to the process of Hellenization of the city that had started after the Balkan Wars.

Images from wikipedia

Quotes

Imagine a town where the languages commonly and regularly spoken are old Spanish, much adulterated, Greek, Turkish, Italian, Bulgarian, Serb, Roumanian, and French; where every one has changed his subjection at least once during the last five years, -from Turkish to Greek-, and where before that several thousands of people had all sorts of claims to European nationalities ... (under which one brother in the same family could be "French", another "English", another "Italian"), perhaps without one of them being able to speak a single sentence in the tongue of the nationality he claimed.

These are the words of a western visitor of the city in 1918. Six years had passed since the Greek army had reached the city in the First Balkan War and capture it. Until the city was given to the Greek state with the treaty of Bucharest in 1913 the Jewish community of the city was trying to figure out ways to avoid this event, because the transition to a Greek state seemed for the Jews as one that will harm their interests, one that would put Greek Orthodox Christians in charge of a city where for centuries they were the de facto leaders of it.

One idea that was proposed was the internationalization of the city. In a letter to the Zionist Organization Committee in Berlin, David Florentin, editor of El Avenir and deputy chair of Maccabi, worried that the economic strength of the community would diminish under a Greek state, wrote:

We cannot see any logical reason for a development in public wealth. All the efforts of the government will no doubt be directed toward one end: the Hellenization of the city.

The idea of internationalization of the city soon failed and another one proposed was a sort of Zionism in Salonika - the creation of a Jewish national home but not in Palestine. Some members of the Venizelos government were also favouring this idea. However, the treaty of Bucharest ended such aspirations and as the chief Rabbi said to the King Constantine in the first audience with him:

We tried our best to support the course of Turkish domination in Macedonia, and we Jews would have been willing to sacrifice ourselves to preserve that Turkish domination, should it have been possible. I must report in all candor that I would have taken up arms if that had not been an impossibility, in order to prevent the fate which befell the Turks. We have now adjusted to the realities brought upon us by Greek rule and domination.

And he emphasized that the Jews would be loyal to Greece and Constantine promised that he wouldn't allow the Jews to become target of hostility because of their religion.

All the quotes are taken from Fleming's book, "Greece: A Jewish History".

So what comes after the empire?

Tekin Alp (1883–1961) was an interesting figure of this era. He was one of the founders of Turkish nationalism and he gave a new meaning to the word "Turk", a national meaning. Starting as a supporter of Ottomanism as many other people of Thessaloniki, he then moved on to support Turkish nationalism and Pan-Turkism and after 1923 and the founding of the modern state of Turkey he became an advocate of Kemalism. As Mazower notes however, this strong advocate of Turkish nationalism was born to a Jewish family in Serres and attended the school of Alliance Israélite Universelle in Salonika. Before he changed his name he was called Moiz Cohen and he wanted to become a Rabbi. Tekin Alp is an example of how Jews chose to define their political identities in an era when the future was vague, when the model of the empire seemed to crumble and an osmosis of ideas and processes was taking place in the Balkans.

Different visions of what could replace (or reshape) the weak and shrinking empire were emerging in Salonika. The nationalism of the newly created states of the Balkan had turned its gaze on the city and each country hoped to include it in its borders. The Jews of Salonika, caught up in the turmoil, were advocating various ideas. Many were seeing the idea of Ottomanism (an empire based on a constitution that would secure equality for all the different communities) as a better solution than the prospect of living in a Bulgarian or Greek state characterized by a nationalistic agenda that left little place for them. Others (fewer) were also favouring Zionism and a great number of workers were united under a socialistic vision for a multi-ethnic socialist empire. In fact, as Mazower points out, this internationalist vision of the workers became one of the main political expressions of the Jewish community of Salonika in the beginnings of the 20th century.

Reading about this era of uncertainty and turmoil I was mostly impressed by all these competing ideas and visions for what could come after the empire. I tried to imagine myself in a city where the people did not know if in a few days they will be living in a Bulgarian state, a Serbian or a Greek or if something different will emerge. Today, more or less, we live with this certainty of the Greek state and the borders. I am not arguing that it is not a time of uncertainties and a vague future, however, in terms of political identities, nation-states seem to be strongly rooted in Europe and the world.

A new generation

Two generations walk together in this picture. A Jewish mother with traditional clothing and the daughter with Parisian outfit. Modernization in the city and the Jewish community brought changes and created a new group of secularized and westernized Jews. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French Jewish organisation, extended in the end of the 19th century its reach in the city and modern schools began to open to educate a new generation of young people. As Fleming writes: "They exchanged their parent's clothes for Western styles, became looser in their religious observance, and mingled with their non-Jewish neighbors. Cafés and movie theaters sprung up around Salonika's shoreside promenade to cater to the new cohort of semi-Europeanized Jewish bourgeoisie". While the new habits faced criticism by some of the older generation it was these alliance graduates that helped the community to adapt to the new circumstances that modernization was bringing to the city.

Picture from "Οι Εβραίοι της Θεσσαλονίκης: μέσα από τις καρτ-ποστάλ, 1886-1917" by Κωστής Κοψίδας

The old Jewish cemetery

The old Jewish cemetery of Thessaloniki was one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the world. It is located roughly under the Aristotelean University just outside of the eastern old wall. As researchers note, burials in the place can be dated since antiquity (also of Jews) and all through the centuries it was a place for burial for many different people who died in the city. It was however the central cemetery for the Jewish community in the era of the Ottoman Empire and later until the Nazis destroyed it in Word War II and many hundred thousands of Jews were buried there all through the centuries. 

The cemetery is being discussed a lot in the city. The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki has been asking from the university a commemoration about the cemetery but it is denied. Protests were also voiced when the construction works for the metro started and accusations were made for desecration. Searching in the blogs I also noticed that a few months ago the Greek government decided to compensate the community with almost 10 million euro because of a legal dispute regarding the ownership of the land where the cemetery was situated. Among the economic crisis, the cutbacks, the new taxes and measures of austerity many bloggers and commentators seem upset with the spending of all that money for that reason - however, this is also a great chance for all the nationalistic blogs to resume on antisemitic propaganda and conspiracy theories.

It is obvious that 'history' is still disputed everyday in the city of Thessaloniki and not only in theory but also in practical terms, like the case of the cemetery and the demands for commemoration, the ownership disputes and the construction works.
 

Sources:

enet.gr

a google search

Abravanel, the blog: 1, 2

a report about the construction of the metro and the cemetery

pictures from "Οι Εβραίοι της Θεσσαλονίκης: μέσα από τις καρτ-ποστάλ, 1886-1917" by Κωστής Κοψίδας and here

A wide social class spectrum

A Jewish porter (χαμάλης, hamalis) at work

Since the arrival of the Sephardi Jews from Spain (and later from Portugal and other European kingdoms) the Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonika in the Ottoman Empire) became in a few years the majority of the population of the city, often comprising 50% or even more of the city's people. The community became the driving force of the economy of the city and turned Salonika in one of the most important commercial centers of the Empire (and not only). It is interesting that throughout the centuries the Jews of the city where occupying all social classes. 

From poor porters (χαμάληδες, hamalides), mine workers and lemonade sellers, to various craftsmen and merchants, to bankers (σαράφηδες, sarafides), people dealing with insurances and credit notes and to the educated and rich families who owned factories and industries (textiles was a very successful business, also ceramics and other industrial products in the era of modernization) and of course the influential Rabbis. Something that shows the confidence and the importance of the community is the fact that in 1562 they sent representatives to the sultan to ask for a tax relief (in other circumstances that could have cost their heads).

A Jewish aristocrat

The majority of the population however, was poor and uneducated and lived in the center of the city under bad conditions in overpopulated, dirty, noisy and crowded districts. Thus, it is not strange that these numerous workers will play a significant role in the labour movements of the beginnings of the 20th century and the social fight for better working conditions.

A lemon seller

First two pictures:  "Οι Εβραίοι της Θεσσαλονίκης: μέσα από τις καρτ-ποστάλ, 1886-1917", Κωστής Κοψίδας.
The 'lemon seller' is from wikipedia.

Homelands

Yehuda Poliker is a popular Israeli singer of Sephardic decent. His parents were born and lived in Thessaloniki until they were deported to Auschwitz - they survived the Holocaust and Poliker was born in Israel. This song is called "Wait for me, Saloniki" and in the second part Poliker sings in Greek. He calls the city "my sweet Saloniki" and laments his exile from his home - Θεσσαλονίκη μου γλυκιά, πατρίδα δοξασμένη/ ως που ξανάρθει ο καιρός να ζούμε ενωμένοι (My sweet Saloniki, glorious homeland, until the time comes to be reunited - or something like that, his Greek are not very clear in the end). I had found all the lyrics in another youtube video but the video was brought down due to copyright violations - a thing that is becoming really annoying in youtube lately and I hope it doesn't happen with this video also since there are only one or two videos for this song. Unfortunately, I can't find the English translation of the lyrics anywhere on the internet right now. But I will ask an Israeli friend to translate them and soon I will post them here.

When I first read about the Jews of Thessaloniki a few years back, it was really interesting for me to find out that not only Greeks consider Thessaloniki as their homeland. Apart from the Romaniotes Jews who according to historians live in the Balkan peninsula since the first century AD (others also suggest that they migrated in the last centuries BC), the Sephardi Jews came in massive numbers in the Ottoman Empire (and mainly Thessaloniki) in the end of the 15th and the beginning of 16th century, expelled from countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and France. Through the centuries they established a flourishing community in the city and at times they were the majority of the city's population. Naturally, they came to consider Thessaloniki as their homeland. As Fleming says in her book "Greece: A Jewish history", when the ideas of Zionism started to spread and talks about a sovereign Jewish state were emerging, Thessaloniki was already a sort of Zion for many inhabitants of the city: "What is this Palestine you are telling us about now? This is Palestine". Knowing about those things gives me a different feeling even walking in the city. I think of the different multicultural past of the city that has been lost in the process of Hellenization that started after Thessaloniki was captured by the Greek army in the First Balkan War. And I am not saying that in a romantic way, like "Oh, what a glorious past and look at the present, how sad". It just offers me insight, understanding and makes me doubt things that we were taught as natural and we took them for granted.

Moreover, in the case of Poliker I found really interesting that aside the fact that he is an Israeli artist who fuses in his art genres such as rock, Greek and Mediterranean music and also plays many different instruments (like guitar, bouzouki and baglama), he sings obviously with real nostalgia about Thessaloniki, like the city is his home, though he wasn't born or lived in the city. That made me think of what we were discussing in the other class about Bourdieu, the Habitus concept and the internalization and embodiment of history and culture that become our second nature and our memories. People like Poliker (and I am not talking only about Thessaloniki now) have probably heard from relatives and others and read in books many tales about lost homelands and have internalized this memory as their own when in reality it isn't their own - in the sense that they didn't live in that lost homeland. Probably when they visit that place for the first time they might even feel awe, knowing that they are standing on the ground of that sweet homeland were their ancestors lived and flourished. Heck, they don't even need to have relatives from a place to feel that - and now I am thinking of Greeks going to Istanbul and feeling that they are returning to the lost homeland of Constantinople. All I am saying is that all these feelings, imaginations and symbols are in fact really powerful in the minds of people.

One more borderline, one more eternity
Wait for me, Saloniki
Long is the way to Greece
Wait for me, Saloniki

The heart is wandering, the blood is frozen
In the snow of Germany
I lost them all, all of them, there
In the crematorium in Poland

Paled faces, remainders of life
Refugees of the death walk
Full of patches, they are coming
To cry in your streets

The freedom is arriving, a new spring
I am close to you
As a faded shadow in a weak body
I will come at your gates

(thanx to Eyal for the lyrics)